


once in twenty lifetimes

by bluepinstripes



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Mentions of alcohol, They're arguing, also some swearing, but it has a happy ending, idk i was given this prompt and this is what i came up with, kind of fluff, they're probs like 18 in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26136094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluepinstripes/pseuds/bluepinstripes
Summary: It's the middle of the night, a year since monsters and death and horror, and all Annabeth can think is that she loves him.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 19
Kudos: 106





	once in twenty lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so liz / nerdylizj gave me this prompt, and I don't know if it's any good, but this is what i came up with. The prompt was "an old argument in the autumn, but make it folklore."

It starts after a few glasses of wine, alone in his cabin one October night when they’re back at camp for the weekend, and she finds herself staring at him like they haven’t had this argument before, like she hasn’t stood in this spot and he hasn’t sat in that bed and they haven’t stared at each other with a fire in their eyes that they don’t really mean.

“Beth, stop,” he says, finalty in his voice, and it’s building up to something, some age old argument that’s spurred on by the bite of the cold autumn air and the fact that the bottles of rosé sitting on his counter are empty. They’re tired, so tired, so done with the gods and the prophecies and the rest of it that they can’t stand it anymore, can’t stand the anger that’s burning in their stomachs and the resentment in their voices that they’re trying so damn hard not to direct at each other.

“Percy, you said New Rome,” she says quietly, not even looking at him. Tartarus sits in the back of her mind like a feeling she can’t shake off, and she _remembers_. They’re sinking in a river of death, and she remembers him talking about New Rome, she remembers him describing the city, and their future, and all the rest of it, and it just sounded so perfect it didn’t seem real. And now, she guesses, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Not this Percy, battered and broken and twisting with nightmares every night. Not this lifetime.

He breaks eye contact with her, then, and he looks at his hands, twisting in his lap. It’s been a year since Tartarus, a year since he decides to risk it all for a chance to be with her, even if it meant the end, even if it meant they’re still reeling from it now. They might always be reeling. It seems that way, at least at night, when the darkness in his cabin looks like the monsters that used to reach for him in the pit, and he can hardly stand it.

“I -- I just…” his voice breaks, then, and she feels a part of her heart shatter. He sounds like a little boy, twelve years old on the step of the Big House begging for his mother to come back. She hates to see how much he’s changed, how hard he’s become around the edges in the time that she’s known him. “I can’t do it anymore, Annabeth. I just -- I want to be normal.”

She knows what he means. There’s an entire world out there that doesn’t see him as this great two-time savior of Olympus, who wouldn’t make him sit at a table by himself for every meal because of who his father is. She knows him, she always has: spinning her into a dance under streetlights in New York City with that troublemaker smile and always making it better, just by being there. She can’t picture her life without him, and after everything they’ve been through, she can’t blame him for this. But it hurts.

“I don’t know what I want,” he continues, and she could’ve written the script. He never knows the future, and she always has a plan. It’s them, it always has been, and if they weren’t so in love maybe it would be a dealbreaker instead of this big, massive problem that tears at her every night like a riddle she can’t solve.

She wants architecture, she thinks. She wants the skyscrapers and the blueprints and something her mother would be proud of. Something _she_ could be proud of. She brought back the Athena Parthenos, for gods’ sake, and she wants to be remembered for a millennium.

But he’s looking at her, and his green eyes are shining, and she knows every scar that’s etched into his brown skin like it’s the back of her own hand. “I can’t do school, Beth,” he’s saying, and she’s heard it a thousand times before. “I could get a swimming scholarship, you know that, and New Rome would accept me tomorrow, it’s just…”

“You’re tired,” she finishes, and his lips curve up into a smile, a sad one, because even when they’re arguing, they’re two sides of the same sword.

“I’m so fucking tired. I can’t -- I can’t be a pawn. Not anymore. And I feel like no matter what I do, no matter who I become -- it’s like, is it because I’m me, or some son of Poseidon who was part of some stupid prophecy when I was sixteen? I just -- I need to know who I am outside of that. Outside of fighting, and all of it,” he explains to her, and she hears him, she swears she does, but the wine is making its way through her veins and to her head like a fog she can’t quite wipe away.

“It’s just -- what are you gonna do, Percy?” She asks him, and her hands are gesturing of her own accord, and she loves him more than anything else in the world but she also just wants answers. “Are you just -- are you just gonna follow me, through college and the rest of it? You have to have a plan.”

“I don’t, Beth,” he counters, and he’s off the bed, stepping towards her, grabbing her hands into his. She looks down, then, sees the way his nails are bitten off on the ends from months and months of anxiety and nightmares that only some sort of therapist could fix. She wishes it could be her, but she’s got her own demons to fight. “I just wanna be with you. I wanna be happy. I love you, so much, and I wanna get some shitty apartment and wake up every morning and know you’re there. I just want you.”

Her eyes are stinging. It’s 2 a.m., and his cheeks are rosy from the alcohol, and she thinks that he’s the only person that really truly knows her.

“I just want you, too,” she admits, and wine or not, she knows it’s true.

Percy Jackson is written into her soul, somewhere, and maybe when they make their way to Hades, hopefully old and gray, they’ll find out that this is their second or third or twentieth lifetime writing a love story. Annabeth is a planner, she always has been, but she finds that when it comes to him, none of it really matters.

“Let’s just go to bed,” she finally says, even though her mind is whirring. Athena is always supposed to have a plan, a way from Point A to Point B that makes the most logical sense. With Percy, though, all thoughts of a plan go out the window. He smiles at her, then, a genuine smile that makes the anger and resentment in her chest start to melt away, until all she can feel is love.

As he pulls her closer to his chest, the navy sheets wrapped tight around them, she feels the half-formed plans in her mind begin to melt away as she finally relaxes. Not everything needed a concrete plan, she thinks. Not when you already have something permanent.

**Author's Note:**

> pls let me know how i did.


End file.
